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Using Print to PACS to Digitize Your Legacy Medical Imaging Systems

This white paper will show how LEADTOOLS Print to PACS can be used as a final cog in your digital migration and aid in the completion of Meaningful Use requirements.

Editorial Note

This article is in the Product Showcase section for our sponsors at CodeProject. These articles are intended to provide you with information on products and services that we consider useful and of value to developers.

Introduction

Incorporating a digital Picture Archival and Communication
System (PACS) is a must-have in today’s healthcare industry for many reasons.
Besides the obvious benefits to productivity, speed, collaboration, automation
and so on, there are many government grants and subsidies that providers can
qualify for by showing Meaningful Use. The majority of requirements of doing
so revolve around digitally capturing and presenting healthcare-related
information to improve ease of use and accessibility for individuals, families
and healthcare workers.

However, when an organization invests in technologies such
as PACS and EHR (Electronic Health Records), it is rarely a fast or complete
migration due to the time, cost and training required to do so. Therefore, many
providers are left using multiple legacy systems, and can appear worse off than
they were before. Integrating these legacy systems and modalities is actually
easier and more cost effective than you may think. This white paper will show
how LEADTOOLS Print to PACS can be used as a final cog in your digital
migration and aid in the completion of Meaningful Use requirements.

Benefits and Uses of Print to PACS

Many healthcare enterprises that start down the path of
digital migration find themselves stunted by sticker shock. When this happens,
they will upgrade what they can in piecemeal, leaving in their wake a
convolution of multiple disparate systems within the organization. This is the
primary scenario for which Print to PACS is intended.

At its core, Print to PACS is a virtual printer driver that
can capture the output from any application with printing abilities and
subsequently convert and store that information into an existing PACS. The
primary benefit of this is that your legacy system or modality can now comply
with Meaningful Use standards and keep your organization on the best path for
success. Secondarily, it will save you an incredible amount in both upgrade
and operating expenses since your older devices can continue being used and
various materials and supplies are no longer necessary.

LEADTOOLS Print to PACS in Action

LEADTOOLS helped pioneer and elevate the concept of Print to
PACS through its decades of experience in developing imaging software
development toolkits. It includes everything you need to add Print to PACS to
your organization’s workflow. A fully-functional sample application with
source code is included and can be OEM-branded for use as-is, or can be broken
down and custom-tailored to your solution.

Print to PACS can be integrated in many ways, but the
typical workflow includes the same basic steps: image/data capture,
query/retrieve patient information, and store DICOM data set to PACS as
Secondary Capture or Encapulated PDF.

The print data is captured as an Encapsulated Meta File
(EMF) and stored as a Stream object. Using EMF allows it to be converted to a
raster image or in the case of a print job with text, converted and saved to a
searchable PDF. The next step is to Query the MWL and retrieve any necessary
information to properly correlate the print capture to the appropriate
patient/study/series.

publicvoid QueryMWL(DicomScp server, string strAccessionNumber)
{
// Create MWL Query
ModalityWorklistQuery query = new ModalityWorklistQuery();
query.AccessionNumber = strAccessionNumber;
// Query the server and receive the DICOM Data Set in the DicomMatchDelegate
QueryRetrieveScu client = new QueryRetrieveScu();
client.Find<ModalityWorklistQuery, ModalityWorklistResult>(server, query,
new DicomMatchDelegate<ModalityWorklistResult>(FoundMatch));
}
privatevoid FoundMatch(ModalityWorklistResult result, DicomDataSet ds)
{
// Do something with the results. Most likely there are multiple results,// so one solution is to display them to the user to select and modify.
}

Now that you have the patient information you can generate
the DICOM data set with the required information and add the image(s).

By implementing these steps in some form or fashion, any
legacy system can be tied into your PACS and digitize your entire practice.
From the front desk, to your physician’s private office, and even down into
your server room, Print to PACS can be successfully employed for a flexible and
dynamic solution.

With a clearer picture of how Print to PACS works and the
benefits it will garner for your enterprise, let’s take a closer look at two of
the most popular scenarios for which LEADTOOLS Print to PACS is being used
today.

Automated Server Listener

One of the best implementation strategies for Print to PACS
is to use LEADTOOLS Network Virtual Printing. Greater simplicity is achieved
through a centralized server and streamlined workflow. With the right setup,
this can even be done in a completely hands-off, automated fashion. For
example, by setting the name of the print job to include the Accession Number,
the service can parse that value from the print job and query the MWL Service
or PACS (Query Service) to get the existing patient information with which to
construct the new DICOM data set and store it back to the PACS. This allows
any user operating a legacy, non-digital system within the network to utilize
this central print service and have the output automatically transformed into a
DICOM object and stored to PACS along with the study.

In the same way that one can utilize a Virtual Network
Printer, LEADTOOLS Print to PACS can be extended to healthcare partners outside
your physical network by hosting it as an IPP (Internet Print Protocol)
printer. Therefore, any authorized user can add the printer to his workstation
and utilize your Print to PACS solution from anywhere they have Internet
access.

Alternatively, one can use additional technologies such as
Forms Recognition, OCR and Barcodes to extract the information from the scanned
or printed documents. LEADTOOLS has enough imaging technology at its disposal
to make automated network Print to PACS a viable solution for virtually any
legacy environment.

Comprehensive Data Capture Workstation

LEADTOOLS also takes Print to PACS a step further by adding
in additional image and data capture options alongside the foundational virtual
printing technology. This comprehensive workstation application is an
indispensible tool for office staff and physicians since it can load files from
disk, scan documents with TWAIN and WIA, and even take screen captures and
store any of these image acquisitions into a central PACS.

Conclusion

The flexibility and range of features offered by LEADTOOLS
Print to PACS makes it a perfect solution for any legacy system whether it is a
patient information database, film-based imaging modality and more. With it
you can fully reap the benefits of digitizing your healthcare services and
provide higher quality healthcare to a greater number of patients, which will
have positive impacts stretching far beyond your business and into the entire
community you serve.

Download the Full Print to PACS Example

You can download the fully functional demo which includes
the features discussed above. To run this example you will need the following: